Braves' 14-season playoff run worth more than 2 titles?

The Giants have never won consecutive division titles. In their San Francisco history, they reached the playoffs in back-to-back years just once - the 2002 wild-card/World Series team and the 2003 division winners who lost in the first round.

Every Giants division championship was followed by a season that fell short.

Now consider the Braves, whose 14 straight division titles, in the words of Hall of Famer to be Tom Glavine, is "something that will never be done again," and can anyone who ever played for the Giants disagree?

The 14-in-a-row accomplishment will be a prevailing theme at Sunday's Hall of Fame induction ceremony, in which three top cast members will enter the Cooperstown shrine: Glavine, fellow ace Greg Maddux and manager Bobby Cox.

The streak omits the strike-shortened 1994 season that had no division winners. The popular sentiment is that the Montreal Expos, with the majors' best record when the strike hit Aug. 11 - six games ahead of the Braves - would have cruised to the '94 NL East title. The Braves didn't think so. After all, the previous Aug. 11, they were nine back of the Giants. And won the division by a game, 104 wins to 103.

The Braves did it in two venues, Fulton County Stadium and Turner Field. In two divisions, moving from the NL West in 1994. With two Joneses, Chipper and Andruw. And with or without Ted Turner, the eccentric owner who gave way to Time Warner.

But they won just one World Series, in 1995 over Cleveland.

"Given the choice of winning a couple World Series and enduring all those other bad years," Glavine said on a conference call the other day, referencing the Blue Jays and Marlins, "or having one World Series and 14 division titles, I think, by and large, guys would say give me the 14 division titles and give me a chance to have a World Series every year."

Giants fans, still giddy over 2010 and 2012, might disagree. But give the Braves their due. Only one other team won more than five straight division titles, and that was the Yankees under Joe Torre, who's also being inducted Sunday.